Oscar Wilde's Use Of Satire

Oscar Wilde uses satire to articulate a surprising dismantling of what he seems to deem as outdated Victorian ideals. For one, Wilde presents the performative qualities of the dandy (an aristocratic male) to bring real critique to social class and gender expectation. The figure of the dandy has effeminate qualities that are useful in identifying a man of great wealth and renown. Unlike the apparently vigorous and productive middle class male, the dandy is lackadaisical, idle, and conspicuous. It is the prime aesthetic for a man of high society and one that the women, namely Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax admire. Gwendoline even relegates the ideal man to the home, “The home seems to me to be the proper sphere for the man. And certainly,

There is also an immoral element to the dandy—a sense that he does not have to adhere to social rules because he is the height of social rule, so much so that he apparently transcends it. Another character that behaves outside of gender expectation and almost as one might expect a Victorian patriarch to, is Lady Bracknell. Her domineering position in the story presents her as a policing social patriarch that means to instil in society the appropriate making of an ideal British rule. One comments Lady Bracknell makes about education is a stunning and biting assertion which threatens to topple British rule altogether: “I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square.” This assertion highlights British Victorian anxiety that social revolution is coming and that the national education is a tool meant to keep society exactly as it is, maintaining the status